Thursday, August 28, 2008

Getting Home and More Pics

Well, I won't bore you again with a long detail of my trip home from Thailand, but I figured I'd mention it a bit since something typically Korean happened. I flew back to Busan instead of Seoul, since I'm only an hour away from that airport. Sadly, I had no travel companion anymore from Bangkok into Korea, since Kent's home is closer to Seoul and he flew back into our departing airport.

I really didn't have a firm grasp of how I was getting home from the airport. I knew there were buses that ran from the airport, but I couldn't find a schedule and didn't know exactly where to go or how to get a ticket. Luckily it was a simple process. I just followed the ground transportation signs after I left baggage claim, and found that I just had to wait at a bus stop, which had a schedule and fare information posted. I only had to wait about 15 minutes for the bus, and it was only about $7 (which is still twice as much as it is to get from the Busan bus terminal, but whatever).

I was pretty nervous on the bus, though, since I had no idea where it would stop. Luckily, one of the last people on the bus, and who had to sit next to me for lack of other seats, was a guy who told me all about how he runs a private English academy in Ulsan. So within our conversation (which lasted the whole hour-long bus ride and was a little exhausting), I asked him where the bus stopped. He told me it would stop at the Taehwa Rotary, one of the several major rotaries in town. Not really near my house. So I would have to take a taxi or hope that the one city bus whose route I basically know would stop near there.

However (and here is where the typical Korean part comes in), when the bus stopped and people were getting off, the guy said his wife was there picking him up, and they would give me a ride. Only in a place as safe as Korea would I have accepted that offer. They drove me right to my street and were happy to do it (I think). Neato.

Okay, and here's a link to a bunch of photos that Kent put up online from our trip. Some of them I've posted here, but most you probably haven't seen.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29235655@N04

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